Richard_at_work writes: Dropbox today announced that it has been working on a "top secret" project called Magic Pocket for the past couple of years to get it off its Amazon S3 addiction, culminating in them moving over 400 petabytes of user data to multiple internal data centres and a custom mass storage hardware and software solution.

Dropboxes relationship with AWS isn't completely over however, as they will continue to use AWS for specific regional data stores where there is a requirement, such as the one currently available in Germany for example.

sirlark writes: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lost his Supreme Court fight against extradition to Sweden to face accusations of sex offences. The judgement was reached by a majority of five to two, the court's president, Lord Phillips, told the hearing. Mr Assange's legal team was given 14 days to consider the ruling before a final decision is made, leaving the possibility the case could be reheard.

Richard_at_work writes: Bryan Fischer, Director of of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, has come out saying that the First Amendment is a privilege and not a right when it comes to Islam, and that "The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam." as well as going on to say "Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment." Quite a fantastical claim!

Richard_at_work writes: "Thirty years ago today, the Big Ear radio telescope recorded a 72 second long signal that perfectly matched the expected signature of a signal that was not of local origin. This became known world wide as the 'Wow!' signal after the comment its discoverer, Dr. Jerry R. Ehman of SETI, scribbled in the margin of the print out, and while it has never been detected since, it has fueled arguments on both sides as to the existence of extraterrestrial life ever since."